C

1. Tactics > affiliate marketing
Compare and conquer
Four steps to get the most from comparison-shopping engines
C
omparison-shopping engines results for women’s boots” partway down
(CSEs) come in a wide range of the page—that’s Google Base results.
shapes and sizes. All have been For the comparison-shopping
built to attract people shopping engines that aren’t free, you need to
for certain products, choose carefully, your choice of CSE will
and assist them in contribute to how successful you are. Some
making the right choice. In return, operate via traditional affiliate networks
the owner of the CSE normally earns (Affiliate Future, Webgains, Linkshare,
revenue based on a commission or cost et al); others you can deal with direct;
per click. some you can work with via either. To
Should you be using CSEs? Probably. work with any of them you need to
CSEs enable you to get your products provide them with information about
in front of more people and allow your products. This is normally in the
you to tap into niches and other form of a product feed, but occasionally
people’s traffic flow. They can be a very there’s a manual form to fill in. As a
powerful way to increase volume. minimum, a feed will be a CSV file
incorporating
Broadly the key types are: • product name
• product information
Pure—their only activity is as a • link to product image
CSE, and they cover many product • link to product on your website
areas; a bit like a department store. • price.
See Kelkoo.com or PriceRunner.com
Almost all will send the customer
Niche—CSEs that focus on to your site to purchase, but in
a specific product or category. some cases they will operate the
See ComparetheMarket.com and basket and then send you the
ShopStyle.co.uk. order to fulfil.
Hybrid—these CSEs broadly Optimising step 1:
fall into two categories: A CSE Select your CSEs
that operates its own basket Key things to consider are:
or acts as a shop itself; a shop • Does the CSE sell other
that runs a CSE alongside its products in your sector?
own products. See Shop.com, • Which CSEs do your
Notonthehighstreet.com, eBay, competitors sell on?
and the Amazon Marketplace. • Which CSEs attract your
type of customer?
Shop on the side—non- • What traffic levels are the
ecommerce sites that have a shop CSEs likely to send you—is
“on the side” to profit from their it worth the set-up cost and
traffic. See ElleUK.com/shopping effort?
and Shop.Standard.co.uk. • Cost—commission or per
click? Per click involves
Free—CSEs that don’t charge. See more risk.
Google Base, also known as Google • Cost—don’t forget the cost
Product Search. of building the feed and
any integration required.
Every ecommerce site should have its Some will cost more than
products on Google Base because, for others. If they are operating
one, there are no ongoing costs so it’s their own basket then you
free traffic; second, it can be a quick way also need to integrate your
to get high up the search engine results, order processing system.
so it’s good for SEO. Search on Google You almost certainly want to trial
for women’s boots and you’ll see “Shopping more than one.
10 Catalogue e-business www.catalog-biz.com
©2010 Catalogue Development Centre Ltd.
This article has been reproduced with the express permission of Catalogue e-business and no material may be used without our prior consent.
151 High Street, Ilfracombe, Devon EX34 9EZ • Tel: 01271 866221 • www.catalog-biz.com • info@catalog-biz.com

2. News
Tactics
Views
Step 2: Build the due in soon. It’s critical to keep the feed up to
foundations date; I’d recommend updating it every 24 hours.
Once you’ve chosen your CSEs, optimising the
performance is very similar to optimising pay-
per-click activity. It’s all about how much you
If you’re going to do so, find out when the CSE
picks up the feed and synchronise with it. There’s
nothing worse than posting your feed at 2am on
Choose
pay, the words or information you provide, and
what you keep active. In order to optimise the
a Monday and the CSE not picking it up until
1am on Tuesday—you’re permanently a day out. carefully, your
performance of your CSEs therefore, you need to
make sure you’ve got the tools in place to allow
you to analyse the performance.
Step 4: Collecting data
Once your comparison-shopping engines are up
choice of
First, check out the tools that come with the
CSE; several have their own analytics packages
and running you’ll start to see which categories
and products are driving the sales, and which are comparison-
shopping
so you can see where the traffic and sales are costing you all the money—rather like PPC. This
coming from. Some of them require you to add means you can start getting into the nitty gritty of
their tracking code to your website to enable all feed optimisation. If, say, on Engine A half your
the reporting functionality.
Next, check what information you’re getting
spend is on the earrings category, but you’re not
getting a sale from it then stop providing earrings engine will
contribute to
from your site’s own analytics data. Can you products to the CSE.
identify the traffic that’s coming in from each Some CSEs will let you “bid” more by category;
CSE? Can you see what part of your feed drove so, if on Engine 2 half your sales are coming
that traffic? You may well be able to add tracking
information to the URLs in your product feed
from necklaces, but only 10 percent of your
spend is on necklaces, a bid increase should how successful
you are
to enable that to work better (if you’re using bring you more traffic and sales. If your tracking
Google Analytics, for instance). is detailed enough you can break this down to a
product-by-product basis.
Step 3: The information in It’s worth noting at this point that constantly
your product feed amending your feed can build up hefty bills from
There’s a lot you can do with your product feed your web company. So it may be worth investing
before you even start submitting it to CSEs that in a feed aggregation company—it will take
will improve performance. Look carefully at one feed from you and amend it for everyone
the fields the CSE requests—the more of this you want to send to. You can do this stage of
information you can provide, the higher quality optimisation within its tool for no extra cost.
traffic it will be able to provide you with. For
example, EAN and ISBN numbers can really Step 5: Pick up the phone
benefit you if you’re selling CDs and books. and optimise
Make sure you’re providing accurate It’s worth getting in contact with the CSEs, they
information, such as the correct postage charges, want to keep you on board. They’re usually pretty
and as much product information as possible, good at helping you work out what is working
such as technical specifications. And make sure and what isn’t, and often have plenty of options
your products will be in the right place on the for getting a better position.
site—so check the categories. Finally, always take a look at how your
Some comparison engines like you to flag products look on the comparison-shopping
bestsellers for special areas of the site, this can engine. There’s a strong chance that it has a
really help increase traffic levels for you. profile page for you, so make sure you’ve filled
Each CSE is in part a search engine, so it with accurate and compelling information.
think about your keywords. If you sell only Some CSEs give you a rating; it’s often
petite clothing, your site’s product descriptions pretty easy to improve your ranking—at
probably don’t include the word petite, but on the most basic level, even simply
a search engine (or CSE) you want traffic that uploading your logo helps.
specifically seeks petite. So build your feed to add
any qualifying keywords into the product names. Chloë Thomas is managing
Send the right products; if something’s out
director at e-marketing
of stock there’s no point in including it in your
feed especially if you’re paying for each click! consultancy Indium
You may also want to exclude products that are Web Management.
©2010 Catalogue Development Centre Ltd.
This article has been reproduced with the express permission of Catalogue e-business and no material may be used without our prior consent.
151 High Street, Ilfracombe, Devon EX34 9EZ • Tel: 01271 866221 • www.catalog-biz.com • info@catalog-biz.com